What does bio-geo-dynamical optimization mean?
Landscape, as we know it, results from various dynamic processes. Through millions of years this world has been shaped (molded?) under the influence of climate and vegetation following to the geological conditions.
We can find all thinkable forms of landscape from stable (rock) to eternally moving (dunes). But most of them are in a delicate (vulnerable?) equilibrium. In a steady change soil is build, accumulated, stabilized or eroded. Plants play the major role in this dynamic process. The vegetation is depending from the climate and the local geological conditions, but can also substantially influence both.
Today's civil engineering methods are based on a static model. Natural factors such as vegetation, water and soil composition are only integrated into calculation regarding extreme conditions. A gradual and dynamic integration of these factors is up to now impossible lacking models as well as actual database, which is often difficult to obtain. One of the main reasons for this situation is the lack of confidence from people concerned with construction and landscape. The knowledge needed is not traditionally part of their education.
Safety factors, as they are specified in Europe, are more often in relation to the lack of knowledge concerning the complex relations in nature than with a scientifically based claim for security. The evidence of this statement can be easily proved after every major rain event.
The security factor of this construction, following French standard calculations, is of 0.0018. Nevertheless it endured the heaviest rainfalls (400mm/day) ever measured in the area without damage.
The so called solutions often only move the problem into another part of the landscape. Actually we can see this shifting of a problem due to lacking bio-geo-dynamical integration when analyzing number and damage of the latest European flooding events.
Instead of using a wide range systems analytical approach looking for solutions torrent have been regulated and their discharge accelerated where floods occurred. The real reasons like soil (water stocking capacity) loss, ecologically unsound agriculture and the rise of surface run-off accumulation, have not been handled with. Governments actually promoted the aggravation of this situation with their programs for consolidation of farmlands.
First signs for a change in government policy are the subventions for the reconstruction of field walls in Brittany and for lawning of wine yards in Germany. But also the slowing down of discharge in smaller currents due to renaturalization is part of this concept.
The question of risk concerning road construction, vividly discussed at this time in third world countries, is replaced in Europe by a fictious “final and absolute security“. The question is being consciously avoided, whether many small inundations do economically less harm, than the one “unforeseeable“, bypassing all measures of control.
Biological and geological processes in nature follow a vulnerable regulation. The change in one factor influences sustainably all others.
In planning road construction through slopes the distribution of different soil horizons and their stability is taken as constant. Our experiences show that for example each change in water (bearing) leads to a change of soil chemical and soil physical parameters. This ends at the long term in an shift of vegetation and slope stability. The regulation of this system is a typical cybernetic control cycle. After cyclic changes, which may result in a catastrophe, a new stable state will arrive. A static view cannot correctly describe this situation.
In opposite to classical approaches we offer a dynamic model, taking into account seasonal changes and the long term development as well as the larger environment of the planned intervention. In urban areas and heavily solicited sectors we also integrate the socio-ecological components.
Measures designed by EcoStab develop in the follow independently and stay autonomous and stable. They need few maintenance and their stability increases with the time.
The ecological tuning of each intervention into natural spaces
serves to preserve for future generations an environment
which is worth to live in and to be experienced.